“The larger revelation of the transcendent gifts of Mozart is a crying need in our present condition of dubious culture and civilisation. His spirit, more than that of any other composer, is made of that stuff which can provide the most telling and efficacious antidote to the chaotic thought and action of a blatant age.”
Thomas Beecham, program note, 1937 (quoted in John Lucas, Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music)